We Wanton Boys, Care

First off, sorry to readers for the lapse in schedule…I’m off to Japan for my honeymoon with MY WIFE Greta and we’ve been scrambling like goddamn eggs getting everything sorted. From making sure our passports weren’t in the fucking garbage to checking into the airlines to curating a very rough itinerary while the world day by day crumbles around us…I’ve been finding a bit hard to juggle everything/manage. I know many other people both at home and abroad have it much worse so everyday, everyday, I remind myself how lucky I am.

THAT SAID…apologies. Once I’m back my main goal is working on getting myself on a right schedule to get this newsletter truly sorted, get a proper novel and short story routine up, and get to work amidst the madness.

And this one is…a bit of madness, a bit of mashed-up, and hopefully enlivened writing with some ideas I’ve dabbled with before connecting and correlating with mythology, tech, and the socio-economic disparity the US presently can’t/won’t face up to despite the cold hard facts however hard we’ve tried to over the years.

ANYWAY…thank you for reading and supporting…as always.

And expect some sporadic reports from our Japan travels over the next couple weeks.

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods

There is a characteristic I and others have observed over the years around the broligarchs (Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and of course, king bro Jeff Bezos) of entitlement, of an almost god-like power that feels, especially within the story about Zuck I'm about to mention, loosely correlated in themes and manners to the tales within but not limited to the Genesis flood narrative. We all know the story from the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, which has roots in ancient Near Eastern flood narratives and forms a large part of Hebrew mythology, of God returning to the universe and the world to a time before time to plunge everything in watery damnation and death only to remake it via the medium of Noah's ark.

What triggered this feeling/thought/association was a small piece of news I caught last week in TechCrunch focused on the Meta antitrust case and accusations that Zuckerberg once had a proposed strategy of “wiping everyone’s graphs and having them start again” as a possible solution to Facebook’s declining significance in the social networking space." This felt weirdly correlated to the God-fearing strategies of elimination, control, and rage present in the Genesis flood narrative as God (or in this case, Zuck) discovered the world had soured leaving them with only one choice - destroy their creation and begin again anew.

Zuckerberg, like Musk on X and Mr. Bezos's algorithm on Amazon (though it feels like he would let anybody and everybody sell on his platform), seems entirely comfortable acting as if the thing they built, the thing that gave them their wealth and power, inherently gives them the right to "cast out" or "wipe out" whoever they like whenever they like based on policies they (and their lawyers) wrote long ago. Like a child would answer a parent when asked why they destroyed their sand castle at the beach with an answer like, "Because I made it," the similarities of these broligarch billionaires, stretching from Boomer to Gen X to Millennial to soon to be GenZ, in connection to the story of the varied tellings of the flood narrative, under the microscope of Zuck's feelings most clearly shared in Meta's Q4 2024 earnings call about his key goals for the future, "...this will kind of get back to how Facebook was originally used back in the day" is this seemingly inherent desire or maybe obsession to start again. This, to me, is imperative to reveal not because of its absurdity or to emphasize - as they would like - their power and assumed divinity but his humanity and, therefore, his sameness and weakness within all of us.

This fire and brimstone techno-corporate strategy, one that exists and thrives based on the paradigm that if the users of these platforms are not doing what these creators want (or simply not doing enough) the reality they've given you and then tirelessly curated to create, can easily, in the stroke of a few keys and clicks of a mouse, taken away. To be honest, this doesn't sound so bad but remember, entire businesses are created on these platforms, entire lives upheld and in many cases, entire relationships which, if destroyed, can be detrimental and damaging to millions of peoples lives but appears insignificant to figures like Zuck.

This reminds me of the term "techno-lords," as Yanis Varoufakis, Greek economist, academic, and politician, said of these men in Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, quote, "...the combination of the king, the sovereign, the state, the central bank and the feudal lords, the techno-feudal lords. You can see that this system is constantly doubling-down on our extinction as a species." ​Does Varoufakis's words not feel, with the elimination of everything we've deemed as normal throughout our entire lives in the last three months, as connected to these ancient religious stories, ways, and outcomes per their narratives? There is something in their willingness to destroy, to rebuild or, in many cases, say the old ways must be dissolved to make way for the new (of their design) that feels simultaneously unfair but also hopeless/helpless when confronted with their power, much like I imagine God-fearing folk face when confronted with the power and love and majesty of the Lord almighty. On top of that, these broligrachs platforms, software, algorithms, and general tech are fucking everywhere: imbedded in our work, in our positive and negative pastimes; in our vices and conversation and even dreams with seemingly no way to escape unless you dear user choose to flee into the woods and live in a cabin. Again…that doesn’t sound so bad but is it realistic? Not really.

How does one face that fact? How does one deal? If you are lucky enough to find an answer, well then, what to do?

I haven’t been on Facebook for probably 10 years. I’m on Instagram but it’s mostly for soft networking for poetry and writing stuff. And yes, I like to watch stupid videos of people falling down and golf tip videos. That said, I would give that all up to not have myself or millions of others under the thumb of Zuckerberg and these other techno-lords when it came to our greater lives, our privacy, our wants and needs, or the threat of relationships being "wiped out" only to start again solely because they deem it, as TechCrunch put it, as a way to, "...force everyone to re-create their friend graphs (and) encourage users to reconnect with the social network as they rebuild their social connections.”

It’s going to take a lot more people to resist this kind of thing and likely a whole generation (Gen Z looking at you) to tell Zuck/others to kick rocks to show him he is in fact not and will never be the God he thinks he is.

Third Spaces, You, and Me

There is something about a familiar third space with people you see here and there in the late afternoon that nothing on this green, not always perfect earth can replace. Maybe I’m sentimental (or lonely) but when you find your spot, be it a café or a sports bar, gym, library, golf course, or chess club, etc., there is nothing more pure or a better reminder that you are a vector with a body and senses open to receiving the myriad of beauty and experiences of the outside world. I sound high (I'm not just a break from work), but I had this mild revelation a few days agp after a few drinks at the local dark bar down the street, seeing and hearing and feeling the Lower Haight alive and bustling, instantly reminding me where I was and how fortunate I was to be there swimming in all of it. Milk and honey in my comb and all that to reference Mr. Dylan.

From afar, this idea feels commonplace, ordinary, nothing special. Yes, I often tell myself, I am in this world on a walk, and there is a dog in a dog park and a child crestfallen after falling off the swing set, and the N is rolling by, loud but not obtrusive - all one. But upon closer examination, be it through stillness or just taking a second to inhale, exhale, and observe how bright the stoplight is when it switches from green to yellow to red (and everything and everyone it took to make it so), I start to feel a series of ever-rolling epiphanies that spur both wonder, curiosity, and gratitude.

In some cases, these moments are solely solitary and introspective and may produce narcissistic wonder rather than - in their spaces - collaborative ecstasy. Some may not feel it or even be aware of it happening, so writing and, yes, art and other mediums are the perfect pathways for me to try and express these kinds of things, which are only found in sharing space rather than hiding away. I’m not saying you can’t experience this alone but with another is an entirely different game. Take a Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. To me, this is a perfect example.

So what's the takeaway here? Third, spaces don't have to be extravagant. They don't need to be shareable for social media or even for fuckin pay for entry. There is this notion of the value of releasing capital (your energy) that many have convinced themselves they must do to participate in these third places. They are yours. They have always been yours. Do not let them tell you otherwise. They are everywhere and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t go out and find them.

Blue Collaborations

intro with collab story and poem with video.

I reached out to a creator on TikTok and Instagram that does really interesting, slightly depressing, modern video collages last week for the purpose of doing an overlay of readings from some poetry work found mostly on my IG page. Fortunately, the creator was nice enough to reply and be into working together, proving once again if you have an idea, just follow through with it. Worst that can happen is it doesn’t leading you then to try something else. Below is the poem and then a link to the video on my IG reel grid.

Nothing is Determined, Maybe

They have let all their plans be known now,

and much faster than

we’re comfortable with:

 much faster than I know what to do with.

As fast and ironically as slow

than those who knew how to know

could try to explain.

It’s something we’ve all known

longer than we’re willing to admit.

All that screen time, all that tv time,

all that streaming time

wasted away like summer days of youth

piling up

       only to burn the farm’s hay.

*

I would say that I’m scared

but it feels too late for that.

Was there really even enough time?

Was there ever? What is this fear?

We know that’s what they’re betting on:

 the complacency, comfort, and projections

 of security in monitored social games,

 all for free.

In the slop they’ve designed

they have tricked us all

to eat and

  define ourselves by it, with it, only it, forever.

Nothing is determined but fuck, it sure feels that way.

And I think they know that.

*

My eyes do not feel good open.

I keep checking my phone.

I will keep them open anyway.

The manufactured sunlight stings

so bad

  that tears blurring my sight

is more familiar

  than clarity.

This is my doing, this is our fault.

We signed up for this and this

  is our world now,

  on a path to another,

  or no other

    at all.